Quietly shaken or alarmed

I’ll never forget eating supper at Naramata Centre in our kitchenette.  It was our first time there at this marvelous United Church family camp and the children were quite small.  We were eating dessert when I saw red smeared all over the wall behind the dining table.  It was surprising and I was uncertain where it was coming from.  It was too thin to be blood, but I grabbed a washcloth and cleaned it up easily.  I made sure neither of my children were bleeding, but they were both in perfect health.  I sat back down to have some more dessert then looked again.  More red on the wall! Got out the washcloth, wiped the wall, sat down again, and watched my children like a hawk.

Our dessert was freshly hand-picked cherries that we had harvested from the orchard. Amber, not quite 2 years old, was biting a cherry then fingerpainting the wall with the juice on her fingers!

I don’t remember how I reacted other than cleaning her hands as well as the wall and moving the cherries away from her.  Not just to limit her artwork, but also because too many cherries can cause havoc on our digestive systems.  Having self-control around cherries is hard!

I admire the self-control Jesus exhibited in this story of the Sadducees.  If we read all of Luke 20, we would hear the religious scholars testing Jesus with conundrums and puzzles.  Paying taxes, John the Baptist’s ritual in the Jordan River, and more.  This question about seven marriages was a mental experiment, rather like the more famous Schrodinger’s Cat in a box.  It was also a very divisive topic between the Sadducees and the Pharisees, subject of a vigorous.  They pulled Jesus into the debate, suggesting a ridiculous scenario that the Sadducees thought would end any discussion of an afterlife.  It reads oddly to our current culture, this is not seven brides for seven brothers, but one bride.  If we look at it from the culture of Deuteronomy, we can understand it better.  The world of Deuteronomy was one of tough survival where the tribe was the focal point of every individual’s identity.  And with no rrsps, tffs or pension plans, widows could be in danger of starving to death.  The patriarchal culture didn’t help either.  With a male-centric society, being disconnected from a male family member to protect her was dangerous for a widow.  So, they came up with Levirate marriage which was designed to protect widows and ensure every male ended up with a male heir to inherit their estate and continue the tribe’s existence.  I’m very glad it is no longer a part of Canadian society.  It does exist in other parts of the world where there is a high level of mortality in both adults and children as well as a patriarchal culture.

But this was meant to be a trick question with an obvious answer.  The Sadducees expected Jesus to say that the wife would obviously not be married to anyone because an afterlife is ridiculous.  The Pharisees hoped Jesus would somehow find a way out of the trap.  Jesus said in effect that the riddle was focusing on the wrong question.  God’s children do not concern themselves with who possesses what, or who is married or who belongs to another.  Ownership, entitlement, even sex is not what God’s children should be focused on.

And God’s children are not to worry about fads, fashions and alarmists who only promote emotional reactions to life’s challenges.  2 Thessalonians says, “don't become easily agitated or disturbed by some prophecy, report or letter falsely attributed to us… Let no one deceive you, in any way. Stick to the traditions you received from us, either by word of mouth or by letter.”

Easier said than done.  It’s hard to know who to trust when we get bombarded by scammers who phone or text us out of the blue. How do we know what to believe any more? The United Church has inherited a simple tool that has been around for a long time, with roots in Greek philosophy and Hebrew faith.  It is to use logic, experience, history and faith to discern what is best.  It generally works well.  Logic is a good first step.  Learning from others’ experiences as well as our own is important too – I hear that people get texts claiming to be me asking them to send a money order and I never do that.  Sharing this experience can help keep people safe. 

History both personal and global is also important.  Orhan Pamuk wrote a book about a fictional Cholera epidemic in Turkey and how that was written before Covid 19, yet it was very predictive of how Covid 19 impacted our society because he knew his history. 

Logic, experience, history and faith can help us unravel tricky issues like Jesus did with the Sadducee puzzle.  They can help us build our resilience in times of challenge and unravel complex issues.  They can help us look at situations more calmly, and they can help us develop self-control instead of being constantly shaken and alarmed as Thessalonians describes.

If self-control is a gift of God, it can challenge how we look at others and ourselves.  This is at the heart of the debate around homelessness in Athabasca, for example.  We are not scared of people who are currently experiencing temporary housing shortage, but we are very nervous about mentally ill folks who act impulsively or illogically.  If we look at them as people who have poorly developed self-regulation, will we have more compassion and understanding of them? People assume that everyone has self-control.  But the more we learn about neurodiversity, addictions and the brain, the more we must challenge that assumption.  Recovering alcoholics and addicts say that only when they let go of the delusion of their self-control can they find their Higher Power helping them grow real self-control.

The Good news is that self-control can be grown with patience and understanding, no matter our age or our neurodiverse brains.  It is a gift that is free for the asking.  My daughter no longer paints with cherry juice on the kitchen wall.  She has learned to paint on canvases, the bigger the better! She has also learned to eat cherries with self-control.  Jesus modelled self-control, nurturing it in himself and others and we can too, with faith, hope and kindness as our guide.  Thanks be to God for these gifts of the Spirit at work in our lives!

“Homestead” by Amber Rosborough, 2022 in mixed media, not cherry juice!